NBA PLAYOFFS
What NBA team currently has the longest streak of not making the playoffs?
The NBA enters one of its most exciting moments, but there are teams that haven’t featured in a playoff in a long while. What’s the team with the longest playoff drought?
After 82 games and the Play-In Tournament, the best 16 teams fight to go as far as possible with an eye on the NBA Championship.
What makes the playoffs special is also the possibility of witnessing lower teams upset the bigger ones throughout a seven-game series.
The Golden State Warriors, the current NBA champions, and favorites against the Sacramento Kings, started their series with a loss (126-123), while the Boston Celtics, the competition’s runners-up, proved, as expected, too strong for the Atlanta Hawks in their first game (112-99).
Which team has the longest active postseason drought?
History and fans tend to remember the team with the most NBA Championships won or rivalries that have gone down in the history books, like those of the Celtics vs Lakers or the Warriors vs Cavaliers.
However, the teams that haven’t been lucky throughout the years in terms of accomplishments have gone unnoticed. And that’s the case for those teams who haven’t even made it to the playoffs over the years.
The Charlotte Hornets is the team currently possessing the longest streak of not making the playoffs.
The last time they featured among the 16 best teams in the competition was back in the 2015-16 season, finishing sixth in the Eastern Conference after the regular season. The North Carolina franchise lost their series against the Miami Heat in seven games.
It was only the third time they featured in the playoffs since their rebirth as the Bobcats in 2004-05, suffering first-round exits in all of them.
The Hornets, who are also the team with the longest active series win drought, last won a playoff series in the 2003-04 campaign, when they defeated the Orlando Magic in four games (when the first round of the NBA playoffs was a five-game series) before losing to the New Jersey Nets in five games.
Before the end of this year’s regular season, the Sacramento Kings had been 15 seasons in a row without a postseason appearance, tying the longest postseason drought in NBA history (Los Angeles Clippers 1977-1991).